How to Reduced Anxiety with Meditation - Guided Meditation for Anxiety
How to Reduced Anxiety with Meditation - Guided Meditation for Anxiety
To learn how to meditate to relieve anxiety, it is best to use guided meditation. Especially for those with anxiety disorders, trying to learn how to meditate according to a set of instructions can be very annoying.
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How to Reduced Anxiety with Meditation |
Anxiety is an expression of our body, "Hey, I was under too much stress at once." This happened to the best of us. But when this "always-on" feeling turns into background noise that never disappears, it's time to ask for help. Mindfulness and meditation for anxiety disorders is an evolving field that can help you understand the many ways that anxiety disorders affect your life. This guide is not intended to be a diagnostic tool or treatment route; it is just a series of studies and practices that you can turn to when you start to help straighten your boat.
Reducing anxiety is more about the mind than the external environment. Anxious guided meditation can help provide some spiritual relief. Sometimes you cannot control what happens to you or the world around you. However, you can control how you feel and react.
In a world where more and more people suffer from some type of anxiety disorder, meditation can help people live a calmer and calmer life.
What is meditation for anxiety?
Meditation teaches us to focus more on the present than on the spirit. We are used to let thoughts enter and follow our thoughts. Sometimes these are pleasant thoughts, but many times they may be worry, stressful thoughts, anxiety and anxious feelings.
Many times, we allow ourselves to follow these thoughts and even become these thoughts. Even if nothing happens to our body now, we still feel insecure or anxious about the future because of our thoughts.
Anxiety meditation is a different, guided experience that allows us to practice more presence and provides a technique to deal with the thoughts and reality in our busy and active minds. This practice is also called mindfulness, and it retrains our brains to be present by shifting our attention from our minds to things that connect us to the present, such as breathing and physical sensations.
Meditation is both a maintenance and a treatment. It will appear when you experience waves of anxiety and need to calm down. It will appear when you spend some time practicing mindfulness and getting more prepared for life.
How Mindfulness Helps Anxiety?
Mindfulness is a basic human ability. It can be fully present and aware of where we are and what we are doing, rather than overreacting or being overwhelmed by what is happening around us. The well-known expert Jon Kabat-Zinn described it as "a consciousness produced by paying attention to the present, purposefully and without judgment", adding that "for self-understanding and wisdom.
When you are aware of the present moment, you can access resources that you may not have been aware of that have been with you: your core is static. Know what is needed and what is not needed in life at any time. You may not be able to change your situation, but mindfulness practice provides space to change your response to the situation.
MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) was founded by Kabat-Zinn and is the gold standard for research-supported mindfulness. MBSR was developed more than 40 years ago and is an 8-week program that includes assisted teaching, mindfulness exercises and exercise exercises to help people cope with the stress of daily life. MBSR practice can make you aware of any stress or anxiety in your body and mind and make it a reality. A 1992 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that even in people with generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, or panic disorder accompanied by agoraphobia, MBSR can effectively reduce anxiety and panic symptoms.
According to other studies, when you can create a space between yourself and what you are experiencing, your anxiety will be lessened. However, if you are too accustomed to the pressure that always exists, it will gradually accumulate and form a pressure "habit" that is harmful to your health and well-being. Therefore, when we fall into reaction mode, we will cause more pain in our lives. This is why it is so important to clearly distinguish between unintentional and focused responses.
Mindfulness Works, But Not for Everyone
Mindfulness is an adjunct to healing, not a substitute. Sometimes, when people have difficult or lengthy trauma or abuse stories, meditation practice can connect them with those memories and emotions, and sometimes they feel overwhelmed, especially at first. Therefore, if you have such a story, it is wise to cooperate with the therapist when exploring mindfulness practice.
Meditation seems to improve mental health, but it is not necessarily more effective than other steps you can take. Early research shows that mindfulness meditation has a huge impact on our mental health. But as the number of studies has increased, so has the scientific suspicion of these original claims.
How Mindfulness Calms Anxious Feelings?
1.Mindfulness helps you learn to endure difficult feelings without analyzing, suppressing or encouraging them. When you allow yourself to feel and acknowledge your worries, irritability, painful memories, and other difficult thoughts and emotions, this usually helps them dissipate.
2.Mindfulness allows you to safely explore the root causes of stress and worry. By focusing on what is happening, rather than wasting energy fighting against it or staying away from it, you can create opportunities to gain insight into what is causing your concerns.
3.Mindfulness can help you create a space around your defilements so that they don't consume you. When you begin to understand the root cause of your worries, a sense of freedom and openness will naturally arise.
Calm Anxiety in Three Steps:
1.Focus on the present. Invitation is to arouse people's attention to our experience in a broader and more open way. This method does not really involve choices or choices or evaluations, but simply holds and becomes thoughts, feelings or sensations that exist and observe in the body Container. If we can see them from one moment to another.
2.Focus on breathing. Let go of the panoramic screen, let your breathing focus more on a certain part of your body: abdomen, chest, nostrils or any breathing where you can breathe, and then hold it. More focused attention
3.Shift your attention to the body. Being aware of the sensations of the whole body, sitting with the whole body, all breathing, we once again return to a larger and more spacious attention container to experience our experience.
How meditation reduces anxiety?
Anxious guided meditation helps us observe our thoughts and emotions without judgment. When an idea enters their minds, the common thing most people do is to follow it, judge it, think about it, and get lost in it. Instead, regular meditation practice will train us to be present. It can help us get rid of our minds.
This allows us to control the way we view and respond to anxiety instead of letting anxiety control us. We don’t need to agree with our ideas or feel overwhelmed. Regular meditation practice can help us change our relationship with anxiety. It may not make anxiety go away, but it can help you become friends with this anxiety, especially if it is a confirmed disease that you must endure. This acceptance can help us reduce pain.
This is also supported by research. In a study at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, brain scans showed which areas of the brain are turned on and off by volunteers with anxiety disorders while practicing mindfulness meditation.
Research has shown that when volunteers with no experience in meditation report anxiety relief, the anterior cingulate cortex and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (the areas that control emotion and worry, respectively) are activated. Volunteers took four 20-minute sessions and reported a 39% reduction in anxiety.
Anxiety meditation also provides people with techniques and tools to cope with and deal with anxiety and even panic attacks. Usually, when a panic attack or a wave of anxiety strikes, we don't know how to respond. Usually dealing with it can mean putting pressure on it, which can only exacerbate feelings and situations. Through guided meditation, we have a tool that we can ask for help and use it to deal with anxiety more effectively.
The study also showed that anxiety patients who turned to guided meditation reported a greater sense of control, a greater sense of overall well-being, and an increase in overall optimism. These feelings are very helpful in reducing the frequency and intensity of anxiety.
The Science of Mindfulness for Anxiety
The credibility of MBCT is firmly based on ongoing research. Two randomized clinical trials (published in the Journal of Counseling and Clinical Psychology in 2000 and 2008 respectively) laid the foundation and showed that MBCT reduced the recurrence rate of depression in patients with recurrent depression by 50%. The latest research results published in The Lancet in 2015 show that the combination of tapered drugs and MBCT is as effective as continuous maintenance doses. Other studies have found that MBCT is a potentially effective intervention for mood and anxiety disorders.
Can Mindfulness Really Help Reduce Anxiety?
A small study conducted by the University of Waterloo showed that just 10 minutes of mindfulness can help reflect thinking patterns. In this study, 82 participants who experienced anxiety were assigned a computer task to complete, but were often interrupted. Then they were divided into two groups: one group listened to the guided meditation for 10 minutes, and the other group listened to the audiobook for 10 minutes. The participant is then sent back to the computer, while the interruption continues.
The meditator is more successful in staying focused and therefore performs better in tasks. "It surprised me," said Xu Mengran, the lead researcher and PhD student in psychology. Mindfulness meditation promotes the shift of attention from the inner thoughts to the outer environment. It helps them focus on what is happening now, rather than being bothered by their worries. "
Step-by-step guided meditation for anxiety
1.First, find a comfortable place. It can be a chair or a cushion on the floor. Open your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Enter from the nose and leave from the mouth
2.After taking 5 or 6 deep breaths, gently close your eyes.
3.Start paying attention to physical sensations and points of contact. Pay attention to your legs and back touching the chair. Note that your feet are facing the ground. Pay attention to your arms and hands on your knees.
4.Keep your attention here for about a minute.
5.Now turn your attention to breathing. Begin to pay attention to the passage of each breath and the feeling of rising and falling of each breath.
6.You may notice this ups and downs in your chest.Maybe it's your stomach or your mouth. Don't breathe hard here, just observe the process of each inhalation and exhalation.
7.By doing this, your wind may start to linger. You may even find yourself so focused on your thoughts that you forget that you even tried to meditate in the first place.
8.When you notice that your mind has drifted, gently refocus your attention on your breathing.
9.Pay attention to any feelings of anxiety or worry that might try to divert attention from breathing.
10.Don't follow these thoughts and feelings, just pay attention to them and observe them. See what happens when you notice this feeling.
11.Let it pass and let your attention return to your breath. The important thing is that you don't judge these thoughts or feelings, because judgment is to plunge yourself into contemplation.
12.Just pay attention to this feeling, and then return to breathing. It's almost like you pick up a pen in a feeling of anxiety and say "Oh yes, anxiety" and then refocus on breathing.
13.To make the exercise easier, start counting breaths when they pass. Count each inhalation and exhalation, count to 10, and start again. If you are distracted or anxious, start counting again and focus on breathing again.
14. Do this for 5 minutes.
15.Now let your thoughts drift. Release all attention to breathing
16. After a minute, turn your attention to the point of contact between your body and your body.
17.Gently open your eyes and see how
18. You have just completed a mindfulness meditation to relieve anxiety.
Guided Meditations for Anxiety
A Simple Meditation to Overcome Anxiety
Zindel Segal says that increasing awareness of the feelings that accompany difficult experiences provides the possibility of learning to make different connections to these experiences at each moment.
People often stumble upon the concept of acceptance as a way to deal with difficult emotions and mental states. In the MBCT group I led, when participants said "How can I accept this pain?", this can be expected in the fourth or fifth meeting. Or "I want to feel these difficult emotions less, not more!" These reactions reflect an underlying calculation that although trying to avoid or resist negative thoughts and feelings can be exhausting, the strategy has been exhausted in the past. It worked, so... why risk a different and unfamiliar strategy?
Now, instead of answering this question directly, I find it helpful to remember three simple points:
1. Letting negative emotions exist in our lives temporarily does not mean that we choose not to take action. The concept of acceptance introduced in MBCT aims to describe the possibility of developing different relationships with experience, and its characteristic is to allow the experience and make it a reality. Getting difficult feelings into consciousness means recording their presence before deciding how to respond to them. It requires real commitment and a conscious diversion. The important thing is that "allowing" is not the same as resignation, passivity, or helplessness.
2. Deny that the occurrence of a negative attitude is more risky to your mental health. The opposite of permission is quite dangerous. Unwillingness to experience negative thoughts, feelings, or feelings is usually the first link in the mental chain, which can lead to the re-establishment of automatic, habitual, and critical mental models. You will see this when someone says "I am stupid to think this way" or "I should be strong enough to deal with it." On the contrary, changing the basic posture of experience, from "don't want" to "open", can change the chain reaction of this habitual reaction in the first link. So, "should be strong enough" becomes "ah, here comes fear" or "comes judgement."
3. Acceptance can help you through every unpleasant experience. The third is that MBCT practice provides specific methods for cultivating the posture of "allowance and concession" in painful experiences. We often intellectually "know" that more love, care, and acceptance of ourselves and our feelings may help, but we hardly know how to do it. These abilities cannot be produced simply through the effort of will. Instead, they need to exercise over time through repeated exercises to pay attention to how things such as anxiety manifest as tight chests or sadness as heavy shoulders.
The anxiety epidemic
Now that we know what anxiety-guided meditation is and how it works, how bad and common is this anxiety?
Well, good news or bad news (depending on how you look at it) is that you are not alone. Anxiety disorder is the most common mental illness in the United States. More than one in six people are affected every year.
This is very common, and people you know may have talked about it, including celebrities. If you are interested in understanding the prevalence of anxiety, there are many quotes about anxiety; however, anxiety is not always chronic or disease-related.
In this fast-paced, interconnected world, as daily pressures and life worries intensify, anxiety becomes more and more common. The news cycle is getting shorter and shorter. The anger and negative emotions thrown into the world are increasing.
The number of hours worked is increasing. Bills and expenses are piled up. No wonder so many people feel worried and stressed about their work, family and problems. In fact, a normal person can spend an average of 55 minutes worrying a day, while an anxiety patient can spend more than 300 minutes a day.
Anxiety can be a feeling of panic and fear. It can cause lack of sleep. It can even cause physical symptoms such as shortness of breath, nausea and palpitations. Worse, anxiety can worsen other diseases, including heart disease. Therefore, it is very important that even people without diseases can better control their daily anxiety.
Although all these can portray a very grim reality, the truth is that anxiety disorders can be cured. Of course, one way is to guide anxiety meditation regularly.
A 30-Minute Meditation for Anxiety and Stress
MBSR teacher Bob Stahl will guide you through this meditation that combines breathing awareness, body scanning, and mindfulness, so you can explore the sources of stress and anxiety.
Spend about 30 minutes doing this kind of mindfulness exercise. You can sit, stand, or even lie down to do this exercise. Choose a location where you can feel comfortable and alert.
1.Take a moment to thank yourself for being here, and thank you for taking the time to be present in your own life.
2.Connect with your body and mind through conscious control: feel any sensation in the body, any grip, any tightness, and feel your mood, feel your emotions, and simply acknowledge your feelings and let it go
3.Now, very gently withdraw consciousness from the conscious record, let us turn our attention to breathing: pay attention to the breathing in the abdomen, expand when inhaling, and fall when exhaling. Inhale and exhale consciously
4.Now, gently withdraw consciousness from the breath, and we will turn our attention to the body scan. In this body, feel in the world of feelings, thoughts, and emotions and recognize what is being experienced. Everything appears in the body, or sometimes even in thoughts and emotions, admit and let it go.
5.Breathe the whole body. We may notice tension, stiffness, and pain from time to time, and of course it will happen if we can make any of these areas soft. It is also important to know that if we cannot become soft, our practice will tell us to go with the flow. Let feelings vibrate and resonate wherever you need to go; the same applies to our thoughts and emotions, making them a reality.
6.Be gentle with any anxious thoughts arising from conscious inquiry. When we feel in this body and mind, we may sometimes still experience some anxious thoughts, worries, and fears. Sometimes we can use mindfulness exercises, inquiries, and investigations to potentially discover the underlying causes. Our fears. If it seems that even after practicing body scanning and mindful breathing, we still have some feelings of anxiety, now draw our attention to these feelings to acknowledge its feelings and feel fear.
7.Immerse yourself in your feelings with compassion and tenderness. Just like we sometimes dip our toes in the water to slowly adjust to the water temperature, partly. When feeling fear, we must immerse our toes very gently in the water, simply recognize what is there, and use awareness to feel the fear; there is no need to try to analyze or figure things out, just feel the anxiety, fear, worry and let go Experience. No matter what happens, acknowledge it the same and let it go. This is how we feel in fear. Just listen with such sympathy. There is no need to push ourselves harder than we can bear, just work on the edge, feel the anxiety and admit it. When we learn to get along with things, we may discover the root cause of our fear and pain.
8.Now, gently withdraw from the practice of conscious inquiry and return to breathing again. Inhale and exhale, the abdomen feels that the abdomen swells when you inhale, and it drops when you exhale. Inhale and exhale consciously. It just exists in every breath, in and out.
9.Take a moment to observe your thoughts. Just as we are observing the coming and going of breath, we can even start observing the thoughts we think, as if we are looking at clouds flying in the sky, as if we are sitting on the bank of a river just looking at what is under the floating river.Begin to observe the mind, even the thought of fear is just a fleeting psychological phenomenon, like a cloud, observing any thought of fear or anxiety is just a psychological event that comes and goes. Observe the mind and thoughts, pay attention to the nature of the changes in thoughts, just come and go. When we are aware of the ideas and traps we are in, we can break free.
10.Now return to breathing gently. Note, inhale and exhale. When we begin to complete the meditation on how to deal with anxiety, let us take a moment to remember all those who are challenged by these emotions, all those who live in fear and worry; let us express our concerns to all those who live in fear Good wishes for healing and peace. Now let us take this opportunity to thank you for taking the initiative to change your fears and for cooperating with them. When we adapt to fears, may we not be challenged by them. May all sentient beings have no fear no matter where they are, and may all sentient beings rest in peace.
How to Practice Mindful Breathing?
It may be helpful to start practicing five minutes of mindful breathing every day and use it as a basis. You may find that you can add a second or even third 5-minute training session to practice mindful breathing at different times of the day. Gradually extend your conscious breathing to 10, 15, 20 or even 30 minutes at least once a day, and you can get additional benefits. Make this part of the mindfulness practice you wish to do, a special time for you to focus and "go home". Feel free to use an alarm or timer; you can download a free meditation timer from the Insight Meditation Center, which has a beautiful sound.
Like other meditations, mindful breathing can be integrated into your daily activities. As for where to practice informally, almost anywhere is fine. At home, workplace, doctor's office, bus station, or even while waiting in line, take a few minutes to bring some mindful breath to your life. You can also develop the habit of consciously breathing several times after waking up, in the morning, lunch, afternoon, evening, or before going to bed. Once you practice mindful breathing now, you can try to use it when you feel pain to help calm the panic in your body.
The reason why diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing is "panic/anxious" breathing is that it helps to regulate irregular breathing patterns fairly quickly. Usually, when you panic, your breathing becomes fast, irregular and shallow. You tend to breathe mainly into your chest and neck. When you switch to diaphragmatic breathing, this will help regulate your breathing, allowing you to begin to feel more balanced and relaxed.
Explore your breath:
Now take a moment to pay attention to your breathing. Place your hands gently on your abdomen.
Breathe normally and naturally. When you inhale, notice that you are inhaling; when you exhale, notice that you are exhaling.
Feel the rise and fall of your abdomen with your breath. Now take two more deep breaths and continue reading.
A 5-Minute Breathing Meditation
Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Turn off your phone and any other devices that might keep you away from this special moment. Enter a position where you can feel comfortable and alert, whether you are sitting on a chair, on a cushion, or lying down.
You can follow the script below to learn to breathe consciously, pausing briefly after each paragraph. The total target time is at least five minutes.
- Cherish your time. Take a few minutes to congratulate yourself for taking the time to meditate.
- Be aware of your breathing. Now pay attention to breathing in the abdomen or abdomen, breathing is normal and natural.
- Keep breathing. When you inhale, remember to inhale; when you exhale, remember to exhale. If it helps, place your hands on your abdomen and feel the expansion of your abdomen every time you inhale and the contraction every time you exhale. Just keep this awareness of breathing, inhale and exhale. If you can't feel the breath in your abdomen, find another way: place your hands on your chest or feel the movement of air in and out of your nostrils.
- Just know. There is no need to visualize, count, or calculate breaths. Just pay attention to inhale and exhale. No need to judge, just observe, feel, and experience the ebb and flow of breathing. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. Just here and now, pay attention to your breathing, and live a life of inhalation and exhalation.
- Feel what your body does naturally. When you inhale, feel your abdomen or abdomen expand or rise like an inflated balloon, and then feel it recede, contract, or fall when you exhale. Simply ride the waves of breath, inhaling and exhaling all the time.
- Recognize your wandering heart. Sometimes, you may notice that your attention has shifted from your breath. When you notice this, simply admit that your heart is wandering and acknowledge where it has gone, then gently shift your attention to your breath.
- Where you are. Remember, you have nowhere to go, you don’t need to do anything else, and you don’t need to be with anyone now. Simply inhale and exhale. Breathe normally and naturally.Don't manipulate your breathing in any way, just pay attention to your breathing when it comes and goes.
- Recognize your time. When you end this meditation, congratulate yourself on having taken the time to be there, and you are directly cultivating your inner resources for healing and happiness. Let us take a moment to end this meditation with the wish of "may all beings rest in peace".
The benefits of anxiety meditation
Meditation has many benefits. However, if you want to use meditation to help relieve anxiety, here are the benefits of guided meditation for anxiety.
Better Management and Awareness of Thoughts and Feelings
Meditation provides you with a tool that you can use when any thoughts and feelings overwhelm you. You may begin to separate yourself from your thoughts and feelings and begin to realize that your reaction to these thoughts controls your feelings, not the thoughts themselves.
Helps Relax the Busy Mind
When you start to meditate, you will begin to see how busy our minds are. Meditation is an opportunity for you to take 10 minutes or more of introspection during a busy day. Live in the moment and don't fall into the rush of daily life.
Improves Sleep
Research shows that meditation can help people fall asleep faster. People with anxiety disorders often experience symptoms such as sleep disturbance or lack of sleep. Anxious thoughts are unlikely to keep you awake at night. And when you have these thoughts, you will better understand how to deal with them, or at least you will notice your thoughts wandering to bring them back.
Other ways to reduce anxiety
Anxiety guided meditation is not the only way to reduce anxiety. There are other ways to treat the underlying cause, some are more effective than others, and some are more effective.
Medications
Depending on the severity of anxiety, it is best to discuss prescription medications for anxiety and anxiety with your family doctor.
Sometimes antidepressants are prescribed, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
Other times, antihistamines and beta blockers are prescribed. Talk to your family doctor to find out the type of treatment that is best for you and your anxiety disorder.
Therapy
Individual or group treatment can not only help treat the symptoms, but also find the root cause of the disease and possibly solve the underlying problem. Some effective therapies to consider are cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure therapy.
The role of CBT is to help us examine our negative thoughts and how they cause our anxiety. The therapist will then observe the behaviors and reactions that result from this thought. By understanding that it is our reactions and thoughts that affect the way we feel, rather than external causes, we can feel more control.
What it sounds like: Expose the patient to the unpleasant things that their anxiety is trying to avoid. Through repeated contact, it is hoped that calluses will accumulate in the mind to strengthen oneself without being affected by the initial fear.
Depending on the type of anxiety the patient is suffering from, the two types of treatment can be performed together or separately.
From. If you find that anxiety has seriously affected your life, please consider seeking the help of a therapist or professional.
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How to Reduce Anxiety with Meditation |
Better Management of Symptoms
If you feel more motivated, try doing aerobic exercise (such as running) or even lifting weights a few times a week. Exercise is also a good way to make yourself more present. A regular fitness program can keep you focused and give you some positive things to work on and improve.
It’s okay to treat yourself occasionally, especially when you are at the bottom. Eating junk food can help temporarily boost your spirits. However, usually poor food choices not only severely affect your body, but also affect your mind.
Add more leafy greens to your diet and reduce your intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates. Studies have shown that these can make anxiety worse. Drink less coffee, energy drinks and other caffeinated beverages.
Caffeine tends to exacerbate symptoms of anxiety and can even produce anxiety-like side effects, such as increased heart rate and tremor. Guarantee 7-8 hours of sleep every night. In terms of mood and mental health, sleep is an important factor.
A good morning rest can make the rest of the day worry-free. In addition to being good for health, staying up late can also spread worry and anxious thoughts.
